"Out, Damned Spot! Out, I Say."

The phrase "Out, damned spot! Out, I say!" comes from Shakespeare’s Macbeth, where Lady Macbeth, consumed by guilt over her role in murder, imagines blood on her hands that won’t wash away. Thomas Nast often borrowed this line in his cartoons to call out political corruption, particularly when those responsible tried to cover it up.

In this cartoon, Nast targets Horace Greeley and other newspaper editors who were, in his view, whitewashing the deep-rooted corruption of Tammany Hall—the Democratic political machine that dominated New York City politics. The image shows them literally scrubbing down the “corrupt Hall,” an unmistakable jab at their attempts to excuse or ignore Tammany’s record of bribery, patronage, and graft.

The caption drives the point home: “Here’s the smell of corruption still! All the perfumes of the Cincinnati-Baltimore Platform and the ‘Reform’ press will not sweeten this corrupt Hall.” It’s a bitter parody of the line from Macbeth, with “perfumes” representing the lofty promises made by the reform-minded Liberal Republicans and Democrats during the 1872 election.

Horace Greeley, the Liberal Republican candidate who also received the Democratic nomination, ran on a platform of reform and reconciliation. However, Nast saw the alliance with Tammany Hall and other corrupt Democratic interests as hypocritical—painting over corruption with rhetoric, rather than truly confronting it. The reference to the Cincinnati-Baltimore Platform alludes to the national conventions that nominated Greeley and formed the basis of his campaign.

Through the cartoon, Nast suggests that no matter how much the reformers claim to clean things up, the stench of corruption remains—and the public shouldn’t be fooled by fresh paint and flowery words.